


A Place to be From

by deborah_judge



Category: Wilby Wonderful
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-31
Updated: 2011-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-22 00:29:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deborah_judge/pseuds/deborah_judge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buddy wonders what Carol sees, and wishes she could paint a picture to show him.  All Carol wants is a place for herself, but she still doesn't know how to find it.  Set three years after the movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Place to be From

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peoriapeoria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peoriapeoria/gifts).



> For the prompt: Carol and Buddy before they forgot what they wanted.

Three years later Carol gets elected mayor of Wilby Island. She's good at it, keeps everything in order, within budget, working well. And, after all, if she's the mayor she must belong here, even if she once came from the mainland. She misses Toronto sometimes, but she tries not to think about it. She came here for a reason. This was where she had wanted to be, even if sometimes it's hard to remember why.

The food at Sandra's restaurant is getting better, and it's nice to have a functioning video store. The golf course is nice too, like the hotel that went up with it, both built a good distance from the Watch. There are more jobs, which means fewer kids hanging out on streetcorners. Carol works long hours at the office, and never stops being surprised, when she comes home, that Buddy is still there.

*

Buddy wonders what Carol sees when she looks at him. When they were first married he knew, because she would paint him. She'd make love to him blindfolded, finding his contours with her hands and tongue. Then she'd take off her blindfold and paint what she saw. And Buddy knew he photographed well, always saw himself in pictures looking blandly handsome, but when Carol painted him he saw in his naked body all his crags and crevices, broken and solid like the rocks of the Watch. It always surprised him how real he was in her paintings, how solid and himself and alive. It was how he knew she loved him, even though it was the last thing she knew how to say.

They still make love, sometimes. Well, more than sometimes. She'll come home from work and throw herself at him, talking and explaining everything that had happened at work, that she'd done, that he needed to do, and then somehow she'd end up on top of him. But it's over too soon. She's got work to do, and the office is always waiting.

*

Carol uses her last name on everything. She balked at 'Mrs.', that was going to far, but 'Mayor French'? That would do very well. She likes it much better than 'the Mayor', better than 'Mayor Carol French', and certainly much better than 'Mayor Carol'. It makes her feel part of this island, almost as if she were a French herself.

Carol's parents had taught her to remember where you come from, but never to let it tell you who you are. They brought with them from China one change of clothes each and a candlestick that they still kept on the mantelpiece. When Carol's friends at school asked her where she was from, her parents had taught her to say 'Toronto,' and to say it proudly. They were Canadians now.

The formidable Rosalie French, third-generation Wilby Islander, eighth-generation Canadian, had respectfully disagreed. _Mainlander_ , she had called Carol, but she might as well have said _foreigner_. Carol had painted her a picture of the Watch, tried to show her how much she loved this place for its beauty. Rosalie was impressed, flattered that Wilby could be appreciated so well by someone who was, after all, from outside and could never completely understand. Still, she had kept the picture.

Art wasn't going to make Carol a place here, but maybe politics would. She'd work for this place, help make it better, and then it would be hers as well as anyone's. Once you put enough sweat into a place you belong there. At least that was the idea.

*

Buddy isn't sure why he hadn't yet moved out. Carol seems to keep expecting it. Once or twice he even went as far as looking at houses or apartments and thinking about what it would be like to live there on his own. He doesn't do anything about it, though, just like he had never really done beyond some kissing with Sandra. Sandra had moved on, found herself a nice man from a different part of the Island, and was friendly enough to Buddy when their paths crossed. It had been three years, after all, and when he's being honest he has to admit that he's never really missed her.

He doesn't think he'd ever stop missing Carol. He misses her badly enough already, misses what they once had. It's enough, though, to lie next to her at night, to smell her hair and feel the curve of her lip. Not enough to make him happy, but enough to keep him from walking away.

He thinks about what he sees when he looks at her. He wishes he could explain it, that he could speak or paint or something, show her how beautiful she is in all her brittleness and pain. She still is the woman he married, she's not anything different. He's learned better how to see it, in the three years that he hasn't left. He just doesn't know how to tell her what he sees.

*

People love to criticize a mayor. It's part of what a mayor is for, to be criticized, at least that's what Carol tells herself when she reads in the papers that she's brusque or unfriendly. It's not the job of the mayor to be friendly, it's her job to keep the electricity running and the streets clean and greedy developers from building golf courses in the most beautiful places they have left.

When she allows herself a lunch break Carol goes down to the Watch. It's important to remember where you come from. It's also important to remember where you are. "I just wanted to be from someplace," she tells the water as it hurtles itself against the rocks. "I just wanted to have a place to be from." She's lived on this Island for ten years. If she has children (which she hopes she will, she still can, she's still young), their children will have been on Wilby Island for five generations.

The rocks and the waves here are like Buddy, and like her. They look fragile, and they're always breaking, but in a thousand years these rocks will still be here. Sometimes she feels like she's been with Buddy for almost that long. She thinks if she painted their marriage it would look like this place.

She gets off work at five. It's early, but she thinks Buddy might already be home.

*

It's the first painting she ever made for him. It wasn't even of Wilby, it was of the beach in Nova Scotia where they met. She was visiting from Toronto, had treated herself to a two-week vacation from her job as a realtor to paint by herself in picturesque settings. He had just wanted to get away. He found her painting style mesmemrizing, how her frentic strokes and splatters could produce such calm, ethereal beauty. He can still see the light from that day when he looks at it. "I'm trying to build up a national reputation," she had explained when she gave it to him, "it would help if you take it back to Wilby and show it to people there." And Buddy had laughed, because it was just so hard for Carol to admit that she was simply giving him a present.

They made love for the first time that night, and when Buddy looks at the picture a certain way he thinks he can see it in the painting, that it looks like a beach in Nova Scotia as painted by a woman who was about to make love for the first time with the man she would one day marry. And it's crazy, but looking at it makes him glad he didn't leave. Carol can see things he can't, she fusses and obsesses but she makes things that are beautiful.

She's home early that afternoon, she talks about her day at work and he thinks about her painting and tries to see it. Maybe this is art too, with Wilby Island as her canvas, and all her work like her brushstrokes, every detail essential to create beauty. He grabs her hands as she's waving them. They're soft in his and he thinks he may have only just started to love her. "I'm glad you're here," he bursts out.

She stops, looks at him. He can see the brushes and colours working behind her eyes. He wants to know what she sees. "I'm glad you stayed," she says.


End file.
